abandonware games sorted by popularity

Solo Flight is a classic 1985 flight simulation that puts the player in the cockpit of a small aircraft and focuses on the practical side of flying rather than cinematic dogfights....

Striker is an early football game that captures the basic appeal of the sport while squeezing it into the limited technology available on home computers of the mid-1980s. Matches a...

Thunderhawk AH-73M is a helicopter combat simulation that gives players control of a heavily armed attack helicopter and a collection of dangerous missions. Unlike a simple arcade ...

Hard Drivin' is what happens when someone looks at arcade racing and decides that what it really needs is existential dread and a physics engine that actively judges your driving s...

Sleepwalker is a 1993 DOS platform game inspired by the peculiar problem of wandering around while asleep, which is generally considered an unfortunate hobby even before somebody t...

Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans is one of gaming’s most famous “what could have been” stories. Designed as a point-and-click adventure set in the Warcraft ...

Azalta: Cult of the Raven is what happens when a lone developer says, “I can make an RPG better than Ultima!” and sort of does. Released in 1996, this DOS dungeon crawl...

President Elect: 1988 Edition is a political simulation game that allows players to experience the excitement, pressure, and occasional chaos of running a presidential campaign. Re...

OverKill is a 1992 action game with a title that makes its intentions remarkably clear. Players are placed in a hostile environment and given the opportunity to deal with enemies u...

A direct sequel to Deathwatch, Ancients 2: Approaching Evil is like returning to your childhood neighborhood, except everyone’s still trying to kill you. Released in 1994, it...

The Shadows of Mordor is a dark fantasy adventure that feels like a lost chapter from an old-school Tolkien-inspired novel. You explore a grim and dangerous world filled with monst...

Monopoly brings the classic board game of property, rent, and increasingly strained family relationships to the computer. Players buy streets, build houses, negotiate trades, and a...

Dark Ages Volume III: Dungeons of Doom closes out the trilogy with—you guessed it—more doom, dungeons, and ways to fall off platforms you swear you landed on. The serie...

Shadows Over Riva caps the trilogy with a confident stride. The graphics receive a welcome upgrade, the atmosphere takes a darker turn, and the narrative leans heavily into detecti...

Shawl (1986, DOS) is a lesser-known title that carries the unmistakable spirit of mid-80s experimentation. With simple graphics and straightforward mechanics, it focuses on tight g...

Starcross is a 1982 science-fiction text adventure from Infocom that places the player aboard a mysterious spacecraft with an intriguing and potentially dangerous problem to solve....

Back in 1987, Crazy Cars asked the eternal question: how fast can you go before the road becomes an abstract blur? Armed with a sleek sports car and the confidence of someone who&r...

A remake of the arcade classic, CHAMP Asteroids lets you relive the joy of spinning wildly in space and smashing rocks with a tiny triangle-shaped ship. It’s like cosmic road...

In Diggers 2: Extractors, released in 1995, the digging franchise doubled down on strategy while adding a dash of science fiction flair. This time, your miners aren’t just bu...

Berlin 1948 throws you into post-war Germany as a secret agent on a noir-flavored mission through a city drenched in trench coats and suspicion. It’s one part spy thriller, o...

MiG-29 Fulcrum places players behind the controls of one of the most famous fighter aircraft of the Cold War, delivering a serious combat flight simulation filled with missions, ae...

Russian Front 2: The Kursk Campaign is a 1990 DOS strategy game focused on one of the largest armored battles of World War II. Players command forces during the Battle of Kursk, ma...

By 1997, Lands of Lore 2: Guardians of Destiny was already pushing the limits of DOS RPGs. It abandons the grid-based movement of its predecessor in favor of full 3D exploration, w...

Originally released in 1986, Larn is a classic roguelike that wastes absolutely no time reminding players that dungeon exploration is a dangerous profession. Every descent into its...

Released in 1991, Lone Wolf: The Mirror of Death brings Joe Dever's beloved fantasy universe to the computer in an adventure that blends role-playing, exploration, and strategic de...

Heroes of the 357th puts you in the cockpit with a seriousness that borders on intimidating, but in a good way. It leans heavily into simulation, asking you to think like a pilot r...

Pyjamarama is an abandoned action adventure game released in 2004 for Windows; it's a remake of the original Pyjamarama. The original is a classic video game developed by Mikr...

Ah, Black Sect (1993), where the puzzles are cryptic, the villagers are creepy, and the atmosphere is so thick you could spread it on toast. A classic first-person point-and-click ...

Before Titanic was a movie with a lot of weeping, there was Beyond the Titanic, a text adventure where surviving the iceberg is just the beginning. The game takes the historic disa...

Tennis Cup offers a surprisingly nuanced take on tennis, with mechanics that go beyond simply hitting the ball back and forth. Timing, positioning, and spin all play a role, giving...